Considering everything, these are very healthy sales numbers for the game, as is the slight bump in subs. You'd have to be some sort of stock analyst to spin this as bad simply because sales didn't exceed Cata, and the game isn't back up to Wrath sub numbers. MMORPG subs and growth, much like most consumerist / business endeavors, is not some infinite pie. If your econ professor told you otherwise, you were lied to.

Did it sell as well as the past few expansions? No.

Did it sell more than it's modern competitors, and still make an absolute killing in terms of development / investment vs profit? Absolutely.

Is this game going anywhere anytime soon? No.

Does the game have the capacity to claim even more subs (old and new) if the patches in store this year are quality / the equivalent of Ulduar 2.0? Absolutely.

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Not too bad, considering the (for many) disappointment of late Cataclysm, and the (for me) disastrous launch/management of Diablo 3. Since both of them broke records, and both were...flawed, it's reasonable to expect some suspicion in the FOURTH xpac of a game. I mean, over time interest wanes regardless of quality, so..

Did people miss the part where it said first week sales? In 1 whole week, MoP has less than Wotlk and Cata earned in their first day. I don't see this as a good sign for the game.

they say its good because the number of players is less or because cata came off the tail of wotlk which was good in their opinon while cata itself was bad so less ppl are buying MoP and waiting to see how it goes.

Considering everything, these are very healthy sales numbers for the game, as is the slight bump in subs. You'd have to be some sort of stock analyst to spin this as bad simply because sales didn't exceed Cata, and the game isn't back up to Wrath sub numbers. MMORPG subs and growth, much like most consumerist / business endeavors, is not some infinite pie. If your econ professor told you otherwise, you were lied to.

Did it sell as well as the past few expansions? No.

Did it sell more than it's modern competitors, and still make an absolute killing in terms of development / investment vs profit? Absolutely.

Is this game going anywhere anytime soon? No.

Does the game have the capacity to claim even more subs (old and new) if the patches in store this year are quality / the equivalent of Ulduar 2.0? Absolutely.

I would actually say that these numbers indicate a massive failure. Blizzard didn't give us first day numbers, but its clear that the game didn't have great Day 1 sales, the entire reason why they waited for Week 1 sales for the press release. Blizzard i'm sure is hoping the game is big in China because its clearly a big step backward from every other expansion thus far, numbers wise.

Considering everything, these are very healthy sales numbers for the game, as is the slight bump in subs. You'd have to be some sort of stock analyst to spin this as bad simply because sales didn't exceed Cata, and the game isn't back up to Wrath sub numbers. MMORPG subs and growth, much like most consumerist / business endeavors, is not some infinite pie. If your econ professor told you otherwise, you were lied to.

Did it sell as well as the past few expansions? No.

Did it sell more than it's modern competitors, and still make an absolute killing in terms of development / investment vs profit? Absolutely.

Is this game going anywhere anytime soon? No.

Does the game have the capacity to claim even more subs (old and new) if the patches in store this year are quality / the equivalent of Ulduar 2.0? Absolutely.

That's about as good a summing up as you can do. The only thing I'd add to it is to watch and see if they can manage to get 5.1 out before mid-December. If so, they'll stand a chance of growing the game a little more. They've never done that in the past but this is no longer the past. So we'll see.

That's about as good a summing up as you can do. The only thing I'd add to it is to watch and see if they can manage to get 5.1 out before mid-December. If so, they'll stand a chance of growing the game a little more. They've never done that in the past but this is no longer the past. So we'll see.

You're right in the past they released expansion with enough content to last 6 months. Has Blizzard done anything in the last 2 years that would lead you to think they will actually be delivering new content at any kind of reasonable pace?

You're right in the past they released expansion with enough content to last 6 months. Has Blizzard done anything in the last 2 years that would lead you to think they will actually be delivering new content at any kind of reasonable pace?

No and in fact their leading me to conclude the opposite with the amount of gating their doing. What happened Blizzard I thought stuff was gonna come fast this time?

The hammer comes down:

Originally Posted by Osmeric

Normal should be reduced in difficulty. Heroic should be reduced in difficulty.
And the tiny fraction for whom heroic raids are currently well tuned? Too bad,so sad! With the arterial bleed of subs the fastest it's ever been, the vanity development that gives you guys your own content is no longer supportable.

Remember that the statistics are a bit botched.
Seeing as they gave free days for mists of pandaria release.
So once these "ghosts" disappear the subs will be a lot lower.

Unless Blizzard decided to massage its subscriber numbers with "free day" accounts that aren't being paid for, I'm pretty sure only the ones that are actively being subbed (paid for) are the ones they're counting in their 10 mil figure. Thus the "10 million subscribers" part.

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who's honestly surprised? the numbers always go up due to hype, then go down as people realize months later that they get bored of it or that there's no new content. you can quote me on this in several months

You're right in the past they released expansion with enough content to last 6 months. Has Blizzard done anything in the last 2 years that would lead you to think they will actually be delivering new content at any kind of reasonable pace?

In fact they haven't done anything in five years that would suggest that they can actually manage that. On the other hand, they keep bringing it up so it must be on their minds and I'd be a little surprised if they don't have something in mind for around the end of the year. Don't twist words. I'm suggesting that it's something to keep an eye on; not something that's a guarantee.

In fact they haven't done anything in five years that would suggest that they can actually manage that. On the other hand, they keep bringing it up so it must be on their minds and I'd be a little surprised if they don't have something in mind for around the end of the year. Don't twist words. I'm suggesting that it's something to keep an eye on; not something that's a guarantee.

5 years ago they were releasing Black Temple, before Tempest Keep had even been cleared by anyone. Now thats called being on top of things. Fastforward to the post-merger era and its a different story.

They keep bringing it up because the alternative is to simply let the playerbase rot by not feeding them some crumbs of hope. I would like to think that after 2 years of this people would have realized that its just PR spin with no substance when they make these claims about 'faster content', 'dance studio', 'new race animations' etc.

Gnah, this thread is hilariously stupit. Despite the new information both factions (namely the Enthusiasts and the Haters) are blabbering the same stuff they did before -.-

At 2.7 Million sold expansions WoW is most likely not dead. Noone can say for sure why the number what it is, having an opinion doesn't magically transform it into any kind of thruth. If we want to discuss this, we should note this and wait for more information.

5-6 million are from china and the 2.7 million doesn't include them. Also, not everyone who is a subscriber has bought the xpac yet.

Not that it matters at all where subs come from but, 5-6M were from eastern markets when WoW was at 12M. During the first few losses in subs close to 800k came from the east and in the last 1.1M quarterly loss most were from the east as well. These were cited in the shareholder meetings.

Remember that the statistics are a bit botched.
Seeing as they gave free days for mists of pandaria release.
So once these "ghosts" disappear the subs will be a lot lower.

The 7 day free trials, which expired the day of release, have absolutely nothing to do with MoP sales. Those statistics are true, 2.7 million units sold in the first week. That's a dismal number compared to their average of 2.83 million first day sales of the other expansions, but by no means a game killer. Game changer, maybe. Killer, definitely not.

The 7 day free trials, which expired the day of release, have absolutely nothing to do with MoP sales. Those statistics are true, 2.7 million units sold in the first week. That's a dismal number compared to their average of 2.83 million first day sales of the other expansions, but by no means a game killer. Game changer, maybe. Killer, definitely not.

how is it that you quote someone talking about subs and then proceed to write about sales... man thats weird.

why does it even matter what the sales are. It's still 10mill active accounts at $15/month. Blizzard isn't hurting for money and they'll be atleast a few more expansions. WoW isn't going anywhere.

While I agree WoW is not going anywhere, 10m x $15 is also a wrong data. A huge chunk of WoW subs comes from China (more than half? I am not sure) and they have there a completly different payment model. Afaik you pay per time spent online and it usually amounts for much less than 15$ per month. Not to mention not everything from it ends at Blizzard as WoW China is operated by a different company.

Edit: There I checked it now. WoW peaked with a bit over 5 millions subs in western countries. The rest of the 12mln pie was from Asia. When you think about it, I still wonder if we should compare the 10m/12m figure with other games. I remember when things like Lineage had huge subs base in Korea it was mostly ignored as people claimed "nobody cares about Korean market". Granted, when counting only western countries still 4-5mln subs looks damn impressive but it is also a lot less wow-ish (pun intended) than 10-12mln.

If I was the ceo of blizzard and watching their biggest cash cow losing subs year after year I would be hitting the alarm bell. WoW is lost in some kind of causal/hardcore battle. They can't balance pvp, the scale of itemisation is going through the roof, its an out of control beast. They need to go back to what worked and stop trying to fiddle around with lame gimmicks that only give you short term solutions.